Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.

I try to avoid a specific image. I seek to play as many different women as I can to avoid having a label put on me.

I've kept my sanity in this business by trying out for a role and then going home and trying to forget about it.

Mostly, I spend my time being a mother to my two children, working in my organic garden, raising masses of sweet peas, being passionately involved in conservation, recycling and solar energy.

It was in high school that I first became interested in acting. We put on lots of plays.

I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I feel a little guilty only being an actor.

Acting is really only part of my life. I'm addicted to it.

Actors are very generous.

You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You're on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours.

I've been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn't really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.

Onstage or in films, you do affect peoples' lives, and sometimes that's very gratifying. But still, there's this little voice that says you should be doing something that matters.

I think I have a lot of crazy layers.

I've always just adored music. It's my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can't do that if you're a musician.

Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.

I think one of my very favorite films of all time was with Peter Sellers when he played Chauncey, the gardener. Being There.

I feel that its our children who do give us hope because they are the ones who are going to save the world.

I was raised in a time where children were still seen and not heard basically, so I think a lot of us in my generation went the other way and just tried to be as much more liberal and open and we're still paying for it.

Whether you're on TV or on the stage, you have to work hard to stay fresh, real, and full of energy. You can't settle back. You always have to stay on your toes.

Just look at my face. Its an extraordinary experience. All of my friends who are grandparents have been saying, just wait, a bit cynically, but its just extraordinary. You feel like a child again yourself. Just walking on air.

For a woman who's a widow and pretty much a loner, I can walk out, and I'm surrounded by NYU kids. The energy jumps off the sidewalks, and I never feel sad or bored.

I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say. You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.

I got to Broadway a year after I came to New York. I starred in 'Butterflies Are Free' and got a Tony for it. Right out of the gate. Maybe that's why I wasn't very gracious about it. I wasn't driven. And right after 'Butterflies Are Free', I got married and then started a family. I always wanted that.

I live in New York, and when you're older and widowed, it's a perfect place because you just don't feel lonely there, and, luckily, I like my own company, too.

I really do like being independent, and I don't want to have to rely on anyone else to cart me around if I break a bone.

My family was very musical. My brother is an opera singer; my parents both sang.

My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

It's a living, breathing thing, acting.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

I don't see my dancing or acting as two separate things. I don't define them separately, so I can't say one has helped the other, It's all the same thing. More than anything I love being on stage and performing.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.